MrFlibble

There can be a reason though: no proper cloaking "shimmer" effect like in C&C (and also this weird ore thing that spreads over open ground all of itself... must be some side-effect of time travel )

Judging by how some of the ideas for TD that did not go beyond concept sketches or videos were later implemented in TS, I guess the principle of the EMP weapon was akin to its namesake in TS. As for Nod EVA, I think the voice announcements could be "borrowed" from Renegade

How can you judge games you haven't even played?

I think Frank mentioned he wrote it initially either for Covert Ops or for the potential sequel to C&C/"Next C&C game" before it was even determined what exactly it would be. BTW, I think it is no mistake/coincidence that on Frank's site Reload Fire is said to be the Covert Ops credits theme, I guess he really wrote it for Covert Ops and then it was switched to Red Alert. I wonder how many of Frank's songs written during that period were shelved. Luckily those made for C&C survived inside the game files

Well, it's just that my questions here arose from a discussion in another forum where a user said that RA was originally meant to be about WW2 (maybe he referred to the same article/interview but I misunderstood him though).

Thanks. What about RA growing from a WW2-themed game concept, I can't find that quote/interview anymore.

I've got a couple of questions regarding Red Alert's development. I remember reading some information about this in various places I can't track down right not, so maybe some you guys can help me out First, what about RA having been initially planned to be about WW2? I only remember some interview with one of the developers who said something like, "We were tired of Nazis being the bad guys, so we decided the make a game where the enemy is the USSR", but this does not necessarily imply that the game was originally planned to be set during WW2. Secondly, Frank Klepacki says in his commentary to the Red Alert soundtrack that the initial concept was "sci-fi camp", and he wrote Surf No Mercy in this vein. Apparently, the "campy" direction also influenced the inclusion of the Giant Ants both in the Morse code messages in the original manual and in the secret bonus campaign in Counterstrike. This is a reference to the game called It Came From the Desert, which, in turn, pays homage to campy B movies. Another thing is the ever-present timeline question, but what I am interested in is the point when the developers abandoned the idea of tying Red Alert and Tiberium universes into a single whole. I've had the impression that at some point it was officially acknowledged that the two universes are separate, but I can't remember if Westwood or EA did that. It would be very nice if links to interviews or posts were also provided (E.g. Wikipedia mentions that Louis Castle said somewhere that uniting the two universes was a "failed attempt", but there's no link whatsoever )

Most Renegade tracks I mentioned have very limited presence in the actual game. The devs obviously opted for more ambient themes for the FPS setting (like Industrial Ambient: it's good for the atmosphere and works well on that ship mission, but on its own, it lacks the power of the original TD track).

Oh, I left out Renegade, although there are quite a few nice compositions there too: Fight, Win, Prevail (Remix) - an excellent remix of a classic, sadly only a tiny bit of it got into the actual game (in the start of the intro, mixed with a clip from Renegade Jungle). You can listen to it at Frank's website. Renegade Jungle - another nice one, I don't know if it's a remix or not Command & Conquer - a great remix of C&C 80's Mix Packing Iron - a remix of The Defense from TS with a more ambient feel Stomp - Nod Crush remixed Stop Them Again - an interesting take on We Will Stop Them (a.k.a. Deception) Dogfight - a remix of Warfare with some parts of No Mercy thrown in Remixes of Act on Instinct, In the Line of Fire and Mechanical Man are also good. Ordos soundtrack rules Not an Option, A Plan of Attack, Ordos Control, Deception

Heroism, Lone Trooper and Pharotek were written by Jarrid Mendelson (he also wrote Gloom, The Defence and Scouting, while Dusk Hour, Mutants and Flurry were co-written with Frank). I generally like the soundtracks from all Westwood RTS games, it's hard to pick a few favourites. I'll try anyway C&C: Mechanical Man (a.k.a. Target), Industrial, Deception (a.k.a. We Will Stop Them), No Mercy, Enemies to Be Feared, Radio, Reaching Out, Airstrike Covert Ops: Depth Charge, Voice Rhythm, Drill, Creeping Upon, C&C 80's Mix RA: Radio 2, Crush, Fogger, Trenches, Workmen, Face the Enemy 1, Surf No Mercy, Run, Terminate, Big Foot, Reload Fire, Militant Force Counterstrike: Voice Rhythm 2, Radio 2 Remix, Arazoid, Underlying Thoughts, Backstab Aftermath: Bog, The Search, Traction, Groundwire, Gloom Sole Survivor: HM Remix Dune 2000: The Fremen, Rise of Harkonnen, Harkonnen Battle, Attack on Arrakis, Robotix, The Ambush, The Atreides Gain TS: Nod Crush, Valves, Mad Rap, map selection screen theme Firestorm: Slave to the System, Elusive, Link Up RA2: HM2, Power, Eagle Hunter, 200 Meters, Grinder, In Deep, Motorized, C&C In The House YR: Brain Freeze, Trance L Vania, Drok, Bully Kit Emperor: Ride the Worm, Battle of the Atreides, Assembling the Troops

Two Dune II remake projects have been updated recently. First, Drackbolt has released version 1.78 of Dune 2: The Golden Path. Changelog since 1.77: MAP LOADING - Whenever you start a new game and a map is generated, it will dump a .TGP file to your drive (same folder as the EXE). If you like the map you just played with, keep this file and feel free to rename it (but keep the same extension). You now have an option to load a map inside the chatroom. This is only map data and game settings, not units or player info. Future functionality is planned to include a tool for creating your own maps/scenarios. This feature has been nominally tested NEW SOUND FX - Courtesy of TheRaffy we have a new set of cleaned sound fx. The overall size of the packed file has gone up slightly to 2.5mb, but it is well worth it. Some new sounds have also been added to the game BUGFIX - Fixed bug with units "stacking" when being produced into enclosed areas BUGFIX - Fixed bug with health bar drawing oddly upon unit death BUGFIX - Fixed bug with persistent menus for Trading Posts Secondly, Dune Legacy version 0.96 is out. Singleplayer is now much more similar to the original Dune II. Changes in version 0.96: Cutscenes are now integrated Score at the end of each mission Decoding music on the fly Capturing buildings is now possible again Fixes for gcc 4 (Thanks to David Geier) Structures are degrading Fix: Carryalls bring badly damaged units to the repair yard Packaging deb-files (Ubuntu/Debian) spec-files for packaging rpms (Fedora, Mandriva, SuSE) NSIS Installer Script (Windows) Prepared dmg (Mac OS X) Check for missing PAK-files Begin of chating system

The map is very nice and looks well thought out. Great job! Heheh, right

Hey, that's one nice idea there. I second that And I third that. Pun intended?

Hey, that's one nice idea there. I second that

Other things related to censoring in German RA include the renaming of the Medic into "Mechanobot", with the red cross replaced with a wrench both on the unit build icon and the "healing" mouse cursor. The Attack Dog is called "Terminator-Wachhund" ("Terminator Guard Dog"), which is rather cheesy IMO. I don't know if the dog sprite was censored or not, but all the dog sounds remain the same so it is probably still meant to be organic. The icons in both the French and German versions are different in that the text area is darker than in the English version, and the letters do not have black shadows/outlines. Some icons are a bit different (mostly related to the orientation: certain icons are "mirrored" compared to their English counterparts).

Antivirus software sometimes reports false positives in custom EXE files.

I've attached animated GIFs of the "electrocution" sequence in English and Greman RA. The latter looks like there are sparks flying around the affected soldier: perhaps it was done to show that infantry units are robots made of metal, or maybe they just used a different version of the animation. BTW, the German SOUNDS.MIX also has two unused, unidentified files that seem like cloak/uncloak sounds to me. RA_unknown_sounds.zip

Another interesting thing with German censoring is how some of the mission briefings and, more generally, plot and premises get altered as well. A fun example is from RA Counterstrike Soviet mission inside an Allied complex where the objective is to assassinate Stavros. The German briefing states that the target is a robotic doppelganger of Stavros built by the Allies to deceive the Soviets, and the objective is to destroy it in order to show "those Allies" they were not fooled. IMO, it would be far more logical to ignore the doppelganger entirely instead

Actually, I think it would be interesting to have a look at those censored graphics and sounds, and generally official other language releases could be of interest. There's a Greman version of MiniRA somewhere (I think you can just google it), which has most sounds and graphics from the Greman version (only the ugly hi-res infantry though), but not the terrain packs, which had the censored infantry remains too. I've got a German TEMPERATE.MIX, which not only has the censored decay graphics, but also a slightly different (and better-looking IMO) "electrocuted" sequence. As for Dune 2, the German version is not censored in any way.

It seems to me that the game fails to locate some of its files, and hence asks for the CD. On a side note, I think this topic belongs to The Repair Bay.

Well, I just thought it was worth mentioning. I think Ultraq's been quite busy with other stuff lately, and I've no idea if any future development of his project is scheduled for sometime soon.

The "communism" you're talking about was called Ingsoc, wasn't it?

Well, you could have called it "totalitarian policy" or "totalitarian attitude". Communism is, essentially, an utopia that turned into a dystopia thanks to inept attempts at making it a reality. Since I don't play online, I'm kinda fine with it.

BTW, Ultraq also uploaded v0.28a on his site: http://www.ultraq.net.nz/redhorizon/downloads/ There's also the problem that the Dune II SHP converters v0.28a and v0.24 are complementary, as not all the features work in v0.28a, which does not support SHPs with frames of various dimensions (at least, this did not work for me) and transparency, but does allow the use of remapable color.

Thant's right guys, let's not badmouth Blizzard. True, they hooked half the world on their WoW crank, but they produced so many excellent, influential games like the Warcraft (RTS) series, Starcraft and so on, can't we be more tolerant towards them? I also did not get the communism reference, all the negativity on the side of the game-making companies as described above perfectly fits into the good old capitalism pattern.